Queen of Air and Darkness
by stefanie bean
Summary: A sensual, bittersweet tale of what happened when Hurley went to visit Sun in Seoul (set during "Ji Yeon.") Hurley, Sun, Carmen Reyes, David Reyes.
1. Approaching LAX

**Chapter 1: Approaching LAX**

_I heard there was a secret chord  
That David played, and it pleased the Lord  
But you don't really care for music, do you?_

_It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth_  
_The minor fall, the major lift_  
_The baffled king composing Hallelujah_

- L. Cohen, "Hallelujah"

When Hugo returned to the ordinary world in early 2005 as one of the Oceanic Six, lies stuck in his gorge like food going too fast down the throat. At first it felt good to be back, bathed in love and attention, especially from his dad. And the really awesome part was that Kate and Sayid and Nadia had decided to put down roots in Los Angeles too. So did Jack, but that kind of didn't count, because he was from there in the first place. In the second, he didn't have anything to do with the rest of them, not even Kate.

But as the months wore on, Los Angeles started to suffocate Hugo. For one thing, his mom wasn't so understanding anymore. When was he going to get out and, well, start doing something? Anything? In fact, he hadn't gotten around to much recently. At least before, when his mom nagged him about "doing nothing but lifting a drumstick to his mouth," he'd had a full-time job. Not much of one, but a job nonetheless. Now he didn't. There didn't seem to be much point.

And what his mom wouldn't say, his dad would. What about that girl he was always hanging with, the one with the baby? She seemed nice, and what a tough cookie, too, to have that baby all by herself on a deserted island. "Those must be some baby-bearing hips," David Reyes said with a smirk. And if Hugo just gave his dad a stern sideways glance, it only made things worse.

"What's the matter, she give you the old 'Oh, we're just friends' routine? Be persistent, son, maybe you can talk her into something. That's how I landed your mother," said David, followed by a raucous laugh.

"She's got a boyfriend, Dad," Hugo said. "That doctor, the one from the crash."

Then David sniffed and said, "She got a doctor boyfriend, but she's hanging around with you. What are you, her handbag? If you don't step up to the plate, son, you'll never hit one out of the park. You won't even get a pop fly."

It got so that whenever Kate would come over, while Aaron crawled around the living room rug, trying to pull himself up on the coffee table and Kate held onto the back of his overalls so he wouldn't crack his head on the glass, Hugo's dad got more and more insufferable. David would lean in the door between the living room and patio with a half-grin on his face, or stick his head in the door as he went past from the kitchen to the TV room. Finally Hugo just told Kate, "Can we hang out at your house? Because my dad-"

"I know," was all Kate had to say.

Then Jack and Kate did start taking up with each other again, so to fill his long afternoons and evenings, Hugo started driving past LAX in the old 1974 Ford Pinto which he'd salvaged from his Uncle Emil's body shop, the beater that Emil was going to scrap. Emil's garage was back in the old neighborhood, right in the shadow of the Long Beach Freeway, and he had let Hugo work there, getting the old rust-bucket to the point where it would pass inspection. The 1971 yellow Mustang hardtop which his parents had bought him as a coming-home present sat in the garage at home, unused.

"What you want an old Pinto like that for?" Emil wanted to know. "It's like driving around in a bomb."

"I like it," was all Hugo answered. "It fits me."

Emil just looked at him, not saying anything, not wanting to ask if his nephew meant the wide, generous front seat, or … something else.

On his drives around LA, Hugo would pull off the San Diego Freeway at the El Segundo Boulevard exit, then wind through the back streets to get as close as he could to the runway, and just park there. He never stayed very long, for fear that airport security would come up and demand to know what he was doing there. Whenever he could, though, he'd stare at the jets as they slid up and down to LAX on their ordained paths, covering the sky with their criss-crossed trails. The jet noise mingled with the rumbles from the highway to make a deafening roar, one which might almost drown out your fears and recriminations and regrets.

The massive planes made Hugo think of how good it felt to make that final approach to LAX, when the cars on the 405 looked just like tiny ants scurrying about, busy with their insignificant lives. No doubt someone in one of those jets was right this instant staring down at the freeway, or even at the very spot where Hugo had parked, wondering for a few seconds what was going on, before just leaning back in his seat, because it wasn't his problem.

It occurred to Hugo that all he had to do was walk up to the Oceanic ticket counter and just go somewhere, anywhere. But every time he planned to leave, something came up. His mother and father threw him a party. Jack wanted him to come to his father's memorial service. Kate said that Jack was so much busier at the hospital now, so would Hurley like to come by, drink iced tea, swim in the pool with her and Aaron? All this he did with good graces, but the skies beckoned. At night he lay awake for hours, unable to sleep, wondering if he should go back on the clonazepem, or if it would do any good.

Finally Hugo started driving the red Camaro which had been his belated birthday present. He sold the Mustang to some guy in the neighborhood for cash, then stuffed the wads of bills into the St. Vincent DePaul Society poor-box at his old parish back in East LA, trying not to look at the long lines for the food pantry. At first he hadn't wanted to drive the car, but his dad had convinced him otherwise. It's not like the Camaro was bought with lottery money or something. Did he want all that work to go to waste? his father asked. Anyway, either his dad had taken the Camaro out around the block more than a few times, or Hugo had hallucinated the Numbers in the mileage on the odometer. Maybe it was the first. Please, let it be the first. The panic faded over the next few days and the clonazepem prescription sat on his dresser-top, unfilled.

Then, one balmy September afternoon right after Labor Day, while Hugo was parked by one of the runways, watching the fishbelly-white underside of a 747 come in for a landing, he got a call from his mother. Over the final fading jet-scream his mother shouted into the phone, and Hugo almost couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Some woman just phoned the house looking for you," Carmen said. "And not that Kate, either. You listen to me, that one, she's just stringing you along while she's in between boyfriends."

"Mom-" Hugo protested, but Carmen was on a roll now.

"So this woman who called you, she got some funny Chinese name, what was it? I can't remember. Anyway, she wanted your phone number, but I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday," and on she went. Phone calls from youngish-sounding women didn't happen to Hugo every day, Carmen relentlessly pointed out. In fact, those hardly ever happened at all. So she agreed to pass the woman's number on to her son, even though it was against her better judgment.

"Mom," Hugo sighed in love and exasperation, "It's OK. Just give me the number."

After Hugo hung up, he stared at his phone at the unrecognized number which he'd just keyed in. He thought about making a voice call, but instead texted, "Hey, Hurley here." It was probably nothing, most likely just another scammer. Those weren't so bad, though. In fact, some of them were downright amusing. It might be a reporter, but they had stopped calling after the Oceanic Six had been back for a few weeks. The worst, though, were the family members.

Because Hugo had gotten those calls, too, from relatives of Flight 815 passengers, people asking about their wife or brother or son. They wanted to know what really had happened, not that PR bullshit from the news. The families' need for closure ripped open a whole host of wounds Hugo would rather have left untouched. When he'd first gotten back to the States he had talked to a few of them, but soon he could no longer bear lying through his teeth, saying he didn't know anything. More often than not he did know how they had died, sometimes in ways which were horrible.

No one from Libby's family ever contacted him, though. Sometimes he wondered about that, but the fear of breaking the Oceanic Six pact of silence kept him from tracking them down, from calling them himself.

But it had been months since Hugo had heard from any Oceanic crash family members. So he put his phone in the drink tray and started the car, thinking he'd cruise by In-N-Out Burger for a Double-Double or two and a vanilla shake, when his phone beeped.

_Well, here goes nothing_, he thought. He flipped the phone open, and almost dropped it onto his lap. The name on the caller ID, printed in letters as small as his current prospects for happiness, read, "Paik Sun-Hwa." The message was, "Hey yourself."

Hugo called her back, but got sent to voice mail, which led to a game of telephone tag for the next few days. When he finally spoke with her, he almost couldn't understand her soft, formal phone voice, which sounded more shy and hesitant than he remembered from the Island. The last time he'd seen her stood out clear in his mind, though. When the Oceanic Six survivors had been flown from Jakarta to Hickham Field in Honolulu to reunite with their families, Sun's parents had practically whisked her away. They bundled her into a limousine whose driver looked like a linebacker, accompanied by a large, dark-suited man riding shotgun. Bodyguards, Hugo had thought at the time. And up till that surprising text message, he had heard no word from Sun.

Now her small voice crept over the airwaves, inciting and saddening him at the same time. Jin-Soo Kwon's tombstone had finally been completed. Would he like to come to Seoul and see it? It was such a long flight, fourteen hours from Los Angeles, she said, almost as if she were herself responsible for such a fundamental flaw in the planet's geography, and had to apologize for it. "It is a lot to ask," she concluded. "I will understand if it is too much."

"So, are Jack and Kate, Sayid and Nadia coming?" he asked.

"I've invited them too, of course. But it could be a challenge for Kate with Aaron. And Sayid and Nadia, I don't know …" Her voice trailed off.

"I hear you." Hugo knew without being told what was up with that. Sayid and Nadia could leave the United States anytime they wanted, but getting back in might be another story.

Sun repeated, "If it is too difficult, Hurley, I understand."

"Name the date, and I'll be there."

"A week from now? It's short notice, I know. That's not a problem?"

"Not for me," Hugo told her.

She made a faint drawn-in ahhh sound, as if everything was explained and already settled. Her soft deference wrapped a string of tenderness around his heart, and he could barely speak, much less say what was on his mind, but he managed to sputter out that he wouldn't miss it for anything.

(_continued_)


	2. Budai, Budai

**Chapter 2: Budai, Budai**

___Your faith was strong, but you needed proof  
You saw her bathing on the roof  
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you_

_She tied you to the kitchen chair_  
_She broke your throne, she cut your hair_  
_And from your lips she drew the hallelujah_

- L. Cohen, "Hallelujah"

Hugo found a tailor over in Culver City who claimed that he could run up a suit in a few days. "Those award ceremonies," the wrinkled old man said with a grin as he wrapped his tape measure around Hugo's middle, not even commenting about the inchage. "They're my bread and butter."

The price was staggering, with payment in full in advance. As Hugo counted out the hundred-dollar bills in front of the tailor, who seemed completely unflapped at the size of the pile on the counter, it occurred to Hugo that one reason rich people acted like gods was because of the freedom which money brought. He could walk into any airport and fly anywhere the planes went. If he needed clothes (and it was hard enough to find clothes, he knew that from long experience), and had a little time, there they were. It almost became too easy after awhile. It went to your head.

The suit displeased Hugo, although he had to admit the fit was good, better than any he had before. Its wide lapels and pinstripes of glittering thread made him look like an enforcer for the Mob. It was too late to have another one made, though. Because of that suit, security at the LAX international terminal was a bit more thorough with him than they needed to be. That, and the cash he'd never gotten out of the habit of carrying.

He couldn't sleep on the long flight to Seoul, and found himself thinking more of Sun's late husband Jin-Soo Kwon than of Sun herself. It seemed so long ago that the Oceanic 815 survivors had first come to live on the beach, on the Island. Sun's husband Jin could only speak Korean, it seemed, but not everyone thought so. The talk around the beach camp was that he was just faking it, to have an excuse to go off with his wife so that they could live by themselves, so that they wouldn't have to chip in with the increasing amounts of work required for basic survival.

One day shortly after the crash, Hugo had decided to test Jin. It was a somewhat dangerous experiment, because Jin at the time had had quite a temper, and was intensely jealous besides. Hugo sidled up to Jin while Jin was cleaning fish, and said in a conversational tone, "Your wife is hot." If Jin took a swing at him, Hugo was prepared to roll on the sand in a fetal position, hoping and praying that someone would come quickly enough to pull Jin off of him before Jin broke something critical in Hugo's face. But Jin had just looked puzzled, and had gone on cutting out fish guts for chum, throwing occasional tidbits to the gulls which waited at a respectful distance.

Hugo wasn't lying when he said that about Sun. He'd been watching her, as had practically every other man on the beach, especially Michael Dawson. It was Jin's fierce hatred of Michael which had prompted Hugo's cautious yet perverse desire to test the limits of Jin's understanding. For Sun had a way about her, that was for sure. She moved with demure, restrained grace, but something smoldered in her eyes when she thought no one was looking.

Sun and Jin had fought so much at first that Hugo thought that they might break up. He knew he would have no chance with her if that happened. For one thing, there was Michael, and how she looked at him, and how it seemed that whenever Michael wasn't around on the beachfront, Sun wasn't either. For another, every time Hugo talked to Sun, his tongue froze in his mouth at best, and at worst he said something really stupid. That didn't stop possibilities from coming to life in his midnight imaginings, especially since his shelter sat right next to theirs, where more often than not, their high-pitched quarrels in Korean ended in soft cries and whispers, followed by the long quiet breathing which comes from the sleep which follows love-making.

Sun, in short, was out of his world, out of his league, and not just because of that giant glittering rock on her left hand.

When the taxi dropped Hugo off at the Seoul Gateway Hotel, he stood out front for a moment like the tourist he was, taking it all in. But the tall, steep mountains which ringed the city reminded him too much of the Island, so he turned away and headed for the green-marbled hotel entrance. A top-hatted bellman opened a brass-trimmed door, and an outgoing bevy of girls wearing University of Seoul sweatshirts blocked his path at the base of the marble steps.

The girls clustered around him for a moment, chattering in Korean, when one suddenly reached out and patted his stomach. Then two more did the same, saying "_Budai, Budai,_" over and over in between small laughs. Another one said, "Snorlax." That phrase he did understand, but he couldn't frown, because they were so amusingly birdlike, so obviously not meaning to hurt his feelings, and anyway, he'd been called worse things.

When a small young woman wearing a Hello Kitty headband exclaimed, "Totoro," it sent the whole group into gales of laughter. Suddenly, as if a wind pushed them on their way, the little flock fluttered down the sidewalk on a course all of their own, leaving him smiling and a little embarrassed at the same time.

Sun had sent a driver to take Hugo to her apartment, which was just as well. The silent chauffeur wound his way through snarled streets hung with more neon than Hugo had ever seen in his life. Sun's gleaming high-rise stood in the midst of a tangle of small streets all crammed with tall thin buildings, a vertical neighborhood which rested at the base of the mountain's encircling arms.

"Paik Sun-Hwa," he told the doorman, who nodded and made him wait for a minute in the lobby until she was ready. Then, when confronted with her closed apartment door, he barely had the nerve to knock, dreading and desiring whatever might happen next.

When the door opened, what he didn't expect was to get pulled into the circle of Sun's slender arms. She stood on tip-toe, and he bent over so she could reach him better. The hug went on for awhile, and while he liked having her in his arms for as long as possible, over her shoulder he scrutinized the spacious apartment which gleamed of dark polished wood and rich, pale upholstery.

"You made it," Sun said. "I still can't believe you came all this way."

"Are you kidding?" There didn't seem to be anyone else in the apartment, although from the other room Hugo could hear faint, cooing baby noises. "Is anyone else coming?"

She shook her head, but didn't look all that disappointed. "Kate didn't want to leave Aaron. Sayid was afraid he wouldn't be able to get into the country. And Jack ..." Her voice trailed off.

"Yeah, I know about Jack," Hugo said. "So it's just us." A swelling wave of hope and fear passed over him. This was excellent. Before he could stop himself, the long glad syllable left his mouth and hung in the air between them. "Good."

Under her pale porcelain makeup she flushed faintly pink. "The nanny has gone out for some formula, but she'll be back shortly. Would you like to see the baby?"

"Awesome," he said, and there in a crib in the bedroom squirmed a little bundle of coral and white, cooing at some unseen presence up in the far corner of the ceiling. When Sun picked her up she gave a little squeak, as if her mother had interrupted something important.

"Would you like to hold her?"

"I dunno. My grandpa always said I had two left hands, and needed to grow a right one."

Sun smiled and handed him the baby. "I trust you. I saw you with Aaron, remember. Her name is Ji Yeon."

"How old is she?"

"Almost four months."

"She's so tiny," Hugo remarked as he gathered the baby into his arms. He started to sway a little back and forth, not even aware he was making soothing, rocking movements. Little Ji Yeon curled up against him. "Aaron was almost twice her size when he was way younger."

"Boys are often bigger than girls," Sun answered, but a look passed between them. Even someone who knew nothing about babies would have observed Aaron's unusual size and maturity.

"Island mojo, I guess," Hugo said. Sun gave a little formal smile, not like the bright wide grins of the girls he'd run into on the way into the hotel. He thought he'd better change the subject. "Hey, Sun. What's 'Budai' mean?"

Sun hesitated a moment. "_Budai_," she repeated, correcting his pronunciation. "Where did you hear that?"

"Oh, just around the hotel."

"He's the god of prosperity and good luck."

"Why am I not surprised?"

The front door opened. "Excuse me," Sun said, and spoke in Korean to the nanny, as the woman put away formula in the kitchen.

When Sun came back, Hugo looked at the baby and said, "She's so awesome. And she looks just like Jin."

Sun's smile this time was even smaller and sadder. "Yes, she does," she said, not looking at Hugo. Her face was like a cool, composed mask which shut out the world. She avoided Hugo's eyes and focused instead on the tiny girl nestled on his chest. "She's so comfortable there. It's a shame to disturb her."

It was Hugo's turn to flush now. With a hint of a tremor he said, "I guess we should, like, go see him."

"Of course," she answered, her face blank again as she took the baby from his arms. They rode all the way to the cemetery without saying anything, the sleeping baby in her car seat between them like a barricade.

Sun cried as she knelt before the brightly-polished new tombstone, and said a lot in Korean which she didn't share with him. Ji Yeon woke up during the drive to his hotel, so Sun was busy soothing the fussing baby almost all the way back. As the driver pulled up to the Seoul Gateway's entrance, Sun turned to Hugo and said in an uneven voice full of suppressed feeling, "There was another reason I asked you to come. It's something I haven't been able to do yet. I don't think I can, not by myself."

"Sure," said Hugo, mystified. "Anything, Sun."

"I want to go see Jin-Soo's father. Will you come with me? It will take a few days to arrange. I've tried to contact him by phone, but he hasn't returned my calls. So I'm going to send someone to tell him that we are coming."

"Sun, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, if he hasn't called you back."

"He lives in a fishing village over by Incheon. He may be out on his boat. He's an old-fashioned man, and I remember Jin-Soo telling me that he didn't carry a phone."

The driver was waiting, and cars were backing up behind them. "OK," Hugo said. "You know where to find me." He got out and waited for her to do the same so that he could hug her good-bye, but she stayed in the car. She didn't look at him or wave as the car drove off.

The hospitality staff at the Seoul Gateway were more than happy to book Mr. Reyes for an extended visit. Hugo canceled his flight back to Los Angeles, and didn't reserve another one. He wasn't much of a tourist, though, and the prospect of spending three or four more days in Seoul made his midsection churn with anxiety. That evening, he watched an incomprehensible Japanese television show with Korean subtitles called _Kaiju Big Battel_. It was supposed to be funny, but he wasn't laughing. In fact, his own situation was too close to the victims in the show, buffeted about by big foam mallets of circumstance. He ordered nachos with cheese and diet Coke from room service, wincing at the $55.00 price in American dollars. When the chips came, he pushed them idly around the tray, not hungry, pulled here and there by frustration and indecision.

His room faced westward, and he got up to pull the drapes against the rapidly fading twilight, but the scene of heartrending beauty gave him pause. In the near view sprawled the city, but its jeweled spread of lights stopped abruptly at the foot of dark mountains whose hulking shapes crouched like giants, back-lit by the orange and purple of the setting sun. It was too much, and as he closed the drapes, he headed for his phone which rested on the black polished wood of the bedside table. He would call Sun and beg off. She would have to understand.

He knew the signs only too well, the calling cards of his internal demons. The longer he had lived on the Island, the more they had faded, until they were a dim bad memory, seldom thought of. He remembered how Rose hadn't wanted to return to "the real world," as she had put it, because she was afraid her cancer would come back. It was like that. He'd felt pretty good when he first had returned to Los Angeles. Well, good except for all the lies, and his parents' incomprehension and nagging. But now his demons flickered on the horizon of his thoughts, dancing like the setting sun on the tops of the Korean mountains, and he couldn't risk it. Not again.

Just as Hugo reached for his phone, it rang. He answered it without looking at the caller ID, because sometimes you just wanted to leave things to chance. His heart raced at Sun's little voice. She was at the hotel right now, in the lobby. What was his room number? She would like to come up.

(_continued_)


	3. Fire on the Mountain

**Chapter 3: Fire on the Mountain**

___Baby, I've been here before  
I know this room, I've walked this floor  
I used to live alone before I knew ya_

_I've seen your flag on the marble arch_  
_But love is not a victory march_  
_It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah_

_- _L. Cohen, "Hallelujah"

Hugo turned off the television, and swept the remains of his dinner and the congealing nachos onto the room service tray. Then he nudged the tray in front of the door across the hall, so that it wouldn't look like it was his. Besides his suit, all he had were some t-shirts and a few pairs of cargo jeans and board shorts. He was debating which shirt to put on when he heard a few gentle knocks on the door. Quickly he grabbed a light brown t-shirt festooned with orange palms, and in his nervousness twisted it around his shoulders. He was still trying to get it adjusted around the front when he opened the door.

Sun glided into the room slowly, like a prima ballerina who steps in front of the closed curtain to take her final bow. The audience was on its feet, so she could lower herself before the crowd and take all the time she needed. No matter what she did, this night's particular performance was over. There were no more mistakes she could make, at least not during this dance. Tomorrow's performance was a long way away, so for now, at least, she could relax.

"I'm sorry I didn't ring you earlier," she said as she set down her purse on the coffee table. "I would have liked to invite you to dinner, but I had to be at a board meeting."

All Hugo could think of was, School board? But that didn't make any sense, because Ji Yeon was just a baby. Sun must have sensed Hugo's confusion, for she said, "I run Paik Industries with my father now. There are many meetings."

All Hugo said was, "Wow."

She looked around the room as if it was familiar to her. "Are you comfortable here? I can speak to the manager if you aren't."

"It's all great, Sun."

She lowered her head in a small half-bow, then raised her eyes to meet his, and the glowing smoulder in her expression was unmistakable. A wave of irresistible _d____éjà vu_ swept over him, but it wasn't because he'd ever stayed in this room before, or ever stood before Sun's warm, penetrating gaze in this very way. Sometimes, though, it can be impossible to distinguish strong imagination from memory.

He wasn't sure whether he should hug her or not, not after the cold dismissal of earlier that day. He needn't have worried, though. She walked straight up to him and put her arms around his shoulders as she had done before, in her apartment. Unlike that earlier time, though, Sun didn't pull herself out of the embrace. She stayed close, so close that Hugo couldn't help but breathe in the light sweet fragrance of her hair, something green and herbal, and the blood left his head so quickly it made him slightly dizzy.

"Hey, Sun," he said in a soft voice muffled by her hair.

She said back, "Hey, yourself," then stood on tiptoe, in order to reach as high as she could. She didn't quite kiss him so much as place her lips right over his mouth without touching, leaving it for him to decide whether to fall into the kiss or step back.

It wasn't much of a decision. Into the kiss Hugo fell like a man plunging off a cliff, and they didn't say anything for a long time after that. Her lip gloss tasted like the passion-fruit they used to eat on the Island, which he had thought so exotic at first, until it became more ordinary. She took tender little bites from his lips, and he pulled her as close as he could, taking care not to squeeze her too hard, as if she might break. Back and forth, up and down they went in each other's mouths with those long exploring kisses. Then she broke away from him and he felt a swift disappointment. Was that going to be all?

No, she had only gone to turn out the room lights, leaving the two of them momentarily swathed in thick, velvety dark. With that same seamless glide she crossed the room as if she knew it by heart, and flung open the tall curtains which went from floor to ceiling. The nighttime sky filled the entire wall of the darkened room, the lights like a splendid pile of glowing jewels tossed carelessly aside by a queen who had found something even more fascinating to occupy her attention.

In the dim pale glow of the city-scape, Sun ran her hands over Hugo everywhere, as if she wanted to memorize the entire length and breadth and shape of him. The city-shine gleamed on her hair but left her face in shadow, so that he couldn't see her expression. Her rapid breath, though, and the intense, alert stance of her shoulders let him know how interested she was. It was if she had had a long-standing curiosity which was only now being satisfied. She traveled over him like an explorer who had long since left the expedition station, and had now started up the long climb towards an unknown landscape, feeling along the passage every step along the way, not wanting to miss a single thing.

She peeled off his soft, thin t-shirt like it was a second skin. Now there was nowhere to run, no towel or shower curtain to hide behind, but then he didn't care. If her roving palms had felt good even muted by that protective layer of cloth, nothing stood in their way now as palm skin glided over delicate nipple, and he was suddenly fiercely, desperately aroused. He covered her mouth again, and now it tasted like her, only her and nothing else, because they'd kissed off all the lipstick flavor.

She turned around, back towards him, and for a second he thought he would go mad if they had to stop, but of course he would if that's what she wanted. But no, she only wanted him to unzip her tight linen sheath, and at first the zipper stuck because he could barely work his fingers. Then, as if it had a mind of its own, the zipper pulled free and slid all the way down past the curve of her bottom. She let the dress fall to the floor, and now he did lose himself in desire, because she stepped out of the collapsed linen pile ivory-pale, entirely naked.

He had never seen anyone so beautiful. Excitement had spurred him on at first, fast and urgent, but now everything halted like a movie in slow-motion. Not one of those kinds of movies, although he'd seen his share in his time, always layered over with a thin scum of shame and guilt. This was different. Hugo had come to that strange cross-roads which few ever find, where lust mutates into worship, and the only place to go is down on your knees.

At the center of every woman, at the center of every world there is a fountain, and when its waters are offered to you, you may refuse, as is your right. But if you do refuse, who knows what boons you will miss, what blessings will flow through your outstretched hands to vanish in the dry sands beneath, because you would not stoop to drink?

There was no rush. Hugo rested his mouth on first one breast, then the other, and once more she let out that long, soft ahhh which wrapped itself around his heart even tighter, now that he heard it straight from her mouth. Her breasts weren't as high and firm as he remembered (oh, he would never forget those sun-drenched glory days on the beach, when he watched her exult in her newfound freedom in a bikini made of fine-woven strings which barely covered anything.) Now in his hands those perfect globes rested, still beautifully soft from pregnancy. Down he grazed over her belly, just a bit loose under the navel, where the skin was laced with tiny delicate ridges to show where Ji Yeon had lain inside her.

She parted her thighs, standing astride now, and Hugo sank down on his knees at the water's edge where first he sipped, then drank until he could hold no more, until Sun's long soft cries circled like birds over the mountains.

The moon had risen to fill the night sky, and her face gleamed under its wild pale fire. Laying her hand lightly on his shoulder, she levitated all his mass and steered it in one direction, towards the bed. He lay spread out before her vast and helpless, putty in her hands, flesh entirely open to her will, whatever that might be.

Then he was brought back to himself for a second by the crinkle of crisp foil. She knelt next to him on the bed and said, "Pink or green?"

At first he didn't know what she was talking about, having for an instant confused the two little packages in her hand with candies. What was she asking, did he want strawberry or lime, maybe? Then it hit him, of course they weren't candy. What an idiot he was. "Surprise me," he murmured.

Laughter shone in her eyes as she started unwrapping. Then her hands wandered all over him and her mouth besides, until, sprawled out before her, Sun climbed upon Hugo the way an explorer scales the mountain-side. Her tender hands trod like little feet all over his hills and dales. When she reached the summit she lay there quietly for awhile, playing with his breasts, his sides, his soft belly, as he rolled beneath her.

When together they cried out in delight, it seemed to him that it was not a woman into which he poured himself, but some green spirit who might disappear at any moment. Her gift of emerald gold might the next morning prove to be nothing but a few twigs or an old bird's nest, but he held her close and during that instant which flees even before it is completely over, he didn't care.

Hugo must have slept a little, because the next he knew, Sun had untangled herself from the circle of his arms and was pulling on her slip. The clock read 2:16. "I have to go," she said in a soft apologetic voice. "They think I am at a party."

Hugo couldn't begin to imagine the network of obligations which bound her. It embarrassed him that he hadn't thought about how difficult it might have been for her to slip out. "That's cool," he said. He helped Sun zip up her sheath dress while she slid her feet into slim, pointed shoes.

"Would you do something for me?" Sun said. "Ring the front desk, and ask them to call for a taxi for your guest. Don't say my name, just say 'my guest.' Then tell them to call your room when the taxi arrives, and to put the charge on your bill." Then, as if she knew how that sounded, she said, "I'm sorry. It's just that-"

"Hey, don't worry about it. I'm going to have to, um, turn on the light. That OK with you?"

Sun nodded, and as Hugo keyed the room service number into the phone, he noticed for the first time that she wasn't wearing her big gleaming diamond. On the phone, he did as she had told him, only flubbing it up a little. She powdered her face and put on some lipstick in front of the big mirror, its frame made of wood as dark as her hair. Hugo offered her something from the mini-bar, but Sun didn't want anything. He drank a diet soda while they waited without speaking. Then the room phone rang. The taxi had arrived.

"No, don't walk me down," Sun said as she left. "I'll get in touch with you tomorrow, when I can."

(_continued_)

(**A/N: I retroactively added some verses from Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" because I thought they fit this story well.**)


	4. Armies of Ghosts

**Chapter 4: Armies of Ghosts**

___There was a time you let me know  
What's real and going on below  
But now you never show it to me, do you?_

_I remember when I moved in you  
The holy dark was moving too  
And every breath we drew was hallelujah_

- L. Cohen, "Hallelujah"

The next day Hugo walked to a small park in the middle of the city, where a red and blue pagoda soared above well-kept lawns and chrysanthemum-lined paths already covered with thick autumn leaves. Then he visited a chaotic, bustling department store where he bought a few silk scarves for his mother and an embroidered leather belt for his dad. He didn't think too much of the night before, not really, but instead remembered it along the whole length of his body.

By nightfall Hugo had convinced himself that she wasn't going to call, and he almost called her himself, to tell her he was going back to Los Angeles after all. It wasn't that he was angry, but simply that he almost couldn't take the uncertainty and despair.

Also, what they were supposed to say to Jin's father, Hugo hadn't any idea. Lying to reporters and Oceanic Airlines lawyers was one thing. Lying to his parents or Jin's was another altogether. He knew his own mother didn't believe a word of that Oceanic Six cock-and-bull story, as she had put it, although she kept her peace when it became clear that he didn't want to talk about his time on the Island, or the rescue. But he often caught his mother looking at him out of the corner of her eye, waiting for him to slip up. For all he knew, it would be the same with Jin's dad. No, with Jin's dad it would be worse, because unlike Jin, Hugo had come home alive and in one piece. Jin had not. Lying about how somebody had died just made it worse.

Hugo had turned off the television and was getting ready for bed around 10 PM when that same soft knock came on his door. He thought of getting dressed again, but the idea seemed silly, as she'd seen everything and more. The terrycloth robe provided by the hotel wouldn't have covered half of him anyway, so he wrapped a bath sheet around his wide hips and opened the door a crack. Sun slipped in, as if trying not to be seen. She smiled at the bath sheet and said, "It would be impolite of me to remain dressed." So she stripped down to her underthings, so beautiful that he literally felt it as pain through the center of his body.

They sat together on the sofa wrapped in each other's arms, the lights turned low. "I didn't think Ji Yeon would ever get to sleep," she remarked.

"Hmm," Hugo answered, his face resting in the hollow of her neck where her shoulder began. Then he remembered the times on the Island when Aaron had been fussy or sick, so he asked, "Is she all right?"

"Just a tooth," Sun answered. "But it makes her cry."

"Oh, sorry." How had this happened, Hugo wondered, that she came to be here in his arms. _Just my luck_, he thought. Then in his imagination a crowd of women marched through his memory, one after another as if in a line. First came an older one, with a false leg and a thick Australian accent who said, "You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes." There was his mother, who slapped him hard when he'd said that he was cursed. Then in his mind's eye he saw that poor soul, Danielle Rousseau, who in the thick jungle of the Island where no one would go, the place called the Dangerous Territory, had held him up against her thin wiry body and told him that he was indeed cursed. Finally he saw the college girls laughing, "_Budai, Budai,_" as they rubbed his belly.

He pulled Sun closer to him, breathing in her fresh garden scent. That's what it had to be, pure dumb luck.

Sun sighed. "Did I ever tell you that this hotel was where I first met Jin-Soo?"

"No," Hugo said, wanting to keep nuzzling her, wishing she wouldn't talk, wondering where she was going with this.

"He worked here as a doorman. It didn't go over well with my father."

"A doorman, huh."

"Not for long. My father's business, well, it's mine now. And it had certain unsavory aspects. Jin-Soo got drawn into them."

She crouched down beside him on the couch, resting her head on his stomach so that her voice was muffled when she spoke. "I was so angry at Jin-Soo. There were times I wanted him dead. And now he is." She rolled over onto her side and reached for where her wedding ring would have been, but she wasn't wearing it. Even so, the fingers of her right hand still twisted around the ring finger of her left, still searching. "Oh, Hurley," she sighed. "It wasn't Jin-Soo's fault. I got him into it."

"That must have sucked." Something occurred to Hugo, a thought which hung on like a low fever which he couldn't shake. "Sun, hey, you know, when I said Ji Yeon looked like Jin? You looked really sad, and it sounds crazy, but it almost looked like ... I dunno what it looked like," he finished, feeling lame and clumsy. "It's just like there was something there. Maybe it's none of my business. Never mind."

"No, it's OK," she said, moving out of his embrace but still close enough that he could feel the rhythm of her breath. "I can tell you. It doesn't matter now. Before Jin-Soo and I went to Australia, I had a lover." She waited a second for that to settle in. "His father owned this hotel. When I found out this was where you were staying, I almost couldn't come here."

"I'm glad you did."

Sun went on, "Supposedly he took his own life, but I think my father had him killed."

Hugo went white. "Dude," was all he could say. No wonder she was being so cautious. "This was, like, right before you went to Sydney? That must have been really rough."

Sun nodded. "Jin couldn't have children, so we thought. But that was before the Island, I guess. On the Island, when I found out I was pregnant, at first I didn't know what to do. I was miserable, thinking that the baby might not have been Jin's. Then that doctor, Juliet Burke, did a scan on me in the Dharma medical station. She told me that the baby was Jin's."

"They can tell that from a scan?"

"Not exactly. But they can tell how old the baby is by its size. By the dates, Ji Yeon was Jin's."

Hugo got it. "Which meant that if the baby was that other dude's, the baby would have been born on the Island all fine and stuff, like Aaron. So that stuff was all true."

"Stuff?"

"You know, what Juliet said. A lot of people didn't believe her."

"I know," Sun answered. "However, I couldn't take that chance."

"But if Ji Yeon was Jin's-"

"Yes. You understand. If the baby had been Jae Lee's, we wouldn't have had to leave. We could have stayed there like Rose and Bernard. Jin-Soo wouldn't have died." It came out of Sun in a tumble, as if she'd been thinking about it for many months, but had never been able to say it to anyone. She reached for her wedding ring again, her fingers lost and aimless. "Oh, Hurley," she sighed. "It all seems so stupid. Pointless."

Hugo stroked her face gently and said, "You have an awesome little girl. Although that bit about your dad, well, that did kind of freak me out."

"I'm not afraid of him anymore," Sun said, with a bite in her voice. "He's never going to hurt me or anyone else close to me again." Her body stiffened as she pulled her shoulders up. A fierce look rose in her eyes, and when she kissed him this time he felt her teeth up against his lips.

When they went to bed, she rode him hard, and Hugo almost didn't recognize her wild, almost anguished face in the dim night. Then her pleasure softened her, calmed her down, and she lay beside him, stroking his soft mound of belly. "_Budai,_" he said, and she gave him one of her small laughs.

Then, too soon, Sun slipped out of his embrace and dressed. Once again she asked him to call for a taxi, but this time when she bid him good-bye, she hugged him hard, so that he could feel the steel of her resolve underneath the soft cashmere of her pale, beautifully-cut suit and her tender flesh. "I am sure we'll hear from Mr. Kwon tomorrow," she said right before she left.

Hugo said nothing, just gave her a light kiss. Afterwards, he lay awake for several hours, staring at the ceiling while a looming, ominous feeling hovered above him.

He slept in very late, only waking when early-afternoon sun shone bright through the western window. In the shower he looked down at the rolling hills of breast, the avalanche of belly, seeing his body for the first time as one which could spur desire and give pleasure as well. He'd just finished toweling himself off when the mid-afternoon call came.

"I talked to Mr. Kwon," Sun said. He tried to read her tone, but she sounded even colder and more distant than she normally did on the telephone. "Hurley, I have to see you."

"You know where to find me."

"Not at the hotel. There's a coffee shop down the street from the Sejong Center, just a few blocks from you. Can you meet me there in an hour?" The anguish rang in her voice, loud and clear.

"Sure, but Sun-"

"I have to go. I'll see you there at 3:00." Then she hung up.

Hugo wore his suit, because downtown Seoul definitely wasn't Los Angeles or Honolulu. Not everyone wore a suit, but the busy people hurrying through the crowded streets looked neat and put-together, not laid-back at all. The garment felt alien and constricting, even though the superb cut fit his body comfortably, because wearing something so formal just to go for coffee didn't set easily with him. He arrived early, to find that Sun had already taken a table on the sunniest part of the patio. When he moved forward to hug her, she stood up very straight. A slight hand motion and a tiny, discreet turn of the head signaled to him that he shouldn't, not here. "I ordered you a vanilla latte," she said.

"Awesome," Hugo replied, but his heart sank with a little jolt. That meant she was in a hurry, and couldn't stay long.

"I talked to Mr. Kwon." He said nothing, so Sun went on. "He said that we didn't have to come to see him. That he didn't need comforting." Her sad eyes were black hollows in the cold impassive mask of her public face.

"Jin was a pretty tough guy. Maybe it's like father, like son?"

"I don't know what to think, Hurley. It was a very strange conversation, crazy. Mr. Kwon doesn't believe that Jin is dead."

The warm late September day suddenly became very cold, and a powerful sense of unreality seized Hugo. What was he doing here in this strange city with this woman, with this unwelcome knowledge which presented itself like a rude, drunken cousin at a family picnic? "Uh, what?" he finally stuttered, but he knew the answer even before it came.

"Mr. Kwon says that he was out late one evening doing some work on the dock where he tethers his boat, when suddenly he saw Jin-Soo standing there. He didn't think he was dreaming. Jin-Soo told him to keep the boat ready for him, because when Jin-Soo came back, he was going to work alongside his father just like he was supposed to have done all along." Sun trembled for an instant before going on, as if the words were being torn out of her. "Jin-Soo told his father that he was going to bring me back, to be a fisherman's wife." Now she was really shaking, if the same cold wind which blew over Hugo chilled her as well. "I'm afraid I argued with him, that such a thing couldn't be. Why did I do that, Hurley? After all we've seen?"

"We've seen a lot," Hugo echoed.

"Is it possible?"

"That Jin is alive?" If that were really true, the enormity of what he had done, what they had done, washed over him like an acid bath. "Sun, when that freighter blew, it really blew. I dunno how anyone could have survived it."

"Mr. Kwon was so calm, Hurley. Don't you think if Jin-Soo was alive, I would feel it?"

"Sun, I don't think it works like that."

"So how does it work, then?"

"I don't know." Hugo didn't want to tell her what he had seen. His dead grandmother standing on the neighbor's deck during the loud, busy house party, right before the deck collapsed. Dave from Santa Rosa who had showed up on the Island, before Dave flung himself off the cliff. And the feeling that he couldn't seem to shake, that right out of the corner of his eye, things were watching him, hovering around him, although no matter how quickly he turned his head to catch them, he never could. Sun didn't know that he had been a mental patient. There was so much she didn't know about him, and at this point, there didn't seem to be any way to remedy that.

Sun finished her drink, picked up her clutch bag and said, "I can't live in a world where these things happen. Thank you, Hurley, for coming all this way. And for being willing to go with me to Incheon, even if it wasn't necessary."

At that point Hugo knew that whatever they had done, whatever those two nights had meant, it was over. "Hey, sure, no prob. Say hi to Ji Yeon for me."

She didn't answer, just glided like a graceful dancer into the car parked right outside the coffee shop, then sank into shadow behind the powerfully-built driver who sat hulked over the steering wheel, his eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses.

oooooooo

After Hugo returned to Los Angeles, he checked his phone every ten, fifteen minutes for a missed call. For all he knew, he could have been in the bathroom, or making another trip to the refrigerator. Or pumping gas, because God knows he burned it up driving up and down the Santa Monica freeway, as he traveled around the LA area like one of those birds whose navigation sense had been destroyed by atomic bombs, who circled randomly over thousands of miles of Pacific ocean as they searched vainly for land.

Or maybe he might have missed a call during the therapy sessions he'd recently started, three times a week. The middle-aged counselor reminded him far too much of that old psychic his dad had dug up somewhere, the one Hugo always suspected of being one of his dad's old girlfriends, before he had come back to Hugo's mom. The therapist wouldn't let him keep his cellphone on during their sessions, though.

Just like that horse-faced psychic, like Dr. Brooks from Santa Rosa with his white-blond hair and coke-bottle glasses, Hugo suspected that this current shrink was a fraud too.

At least she didn't want to talk about the Island, or any of the network of lies which Hugo navigated daily as if they were a shaky rope bridge laced over an abyss, about to collapse underneath him any moment. But each fifty-minute hour felt like three, as he gripped his silent phone hidden securely in the vast depths of his cargo pocket. About halfway through the session, reliable as clockwork, his heart would start to pound, then race, as he counted the minutes till he could get out of there and turn his phone back on.

It wasn't until the day after Thanksgiving, when his mother decorated the living room with a ten-foot aluminum Christmas tree covered with red glass Sacred Hearts and topped with a foot-tall gilt angel, that Hugo realized Sun-Hwa Paik wasn't going to call him. He would have to figure out something else to do with the rest of his life.

His father tried to help, was even sympathetic as he said, "So you went to Seoul, had a little vacation. What are you moping about? There are more fish in the sea. Go out and catch one."

Instead of answering, Hugo got into the Camaro, drove to the nearest Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack, and ordered a family-sized bucket of hot wings. He headed out toward Kate's house in West Hollywood, then remembered that she and Aaron had gone to Las Vegas to visit Cassidy Phillips. So he drove around Griffith Park a few times, then parked on a hilltop overlooking athletic fields empty in the December sun, because Christmas break hadn't started yet, and the children were still in school. With grim, methodical determination and no pleasure, he began to eat.

A month later, Hugo led the LAPD on a careening chase down the freeway. On that day the dead would no longer be denied, and for him, nothing would ever be the same again.

(_the end_)


End file.
